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Book reviews for "Taylor,_Robert" sorted by average review score:

Civilization Past & Present (9th Edition)
Published in Hardcover by Addison-Wesley Publishing (20 August, 1999)
Authors: Palmira Brummett, Robert B. Edgar, Neil J. Hackett, George F. Jewsbury, Alastair M. Taylor, Nels M. Bailey, and T. Walter Wallbank
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Civilization Past and Present is an eye opener!
with so many tiny tidbits of interesting information stuck in here and there it was a learning experience just reading the special highlights throughout the book. There were useful lists of important dates and happenings throughout each chapter and even suggested websites relating to each chapter's material for further information. The way the book was written made for easy understanding of the material and better memory of what was read. Although the book follows a text book formula it was fun to read which is rare. A real find!

Decent, concise overview of world history
I looked for a long time to find a decent world history; one that was neither 10,000 pages nor painfully dry. This is the best I found. It is a very readable book of reasonable length. The authors make good use of sidebars with thought-provoking bits of literature which are scattered throughout the overall history. They also make a good attempt at discussing underlying causes and patterns behind the historical events. I perfer that to a dry recounting of the facts, even if I may not always agree with them on the interpretation. It was surprisingly neutral on religious topics, given the origin of the book.


Family Medicine: Principle and Practice, 6th Edition
Published in Hardcover by Springer Verlag (23 September, 2002)
Authors: Robert B. Taylor, Alan K. David, D. Melessa Phillips, Scott A. Fields, Joseph E. Scherger, and Alwyn B. Scott
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Too Brief to Learn from
When I started training in Family practice I searched for a large reference book to study from. I choose this text because it was written so well. The Language is direct, the explanations are clear and the advice is well founded. Now that I am in training the book is not as helpful as I hoped. Most of the time I find the treatment on any given topic too shallow for what I have to learn. I belive this is the result of a compromise between size and completness. I now wish I had saved my money and bought three textbooks - Harrison, Williams and Nelson as opposed to trying to find one book to cover all of internal medicine, obstetrics, and pediatrics.

Excellent practical reference for nurse practitioners
This book is designed in a practical and understandable approach to family practice. It is an excellent text and a comprehensive reference especially useful for a nurse practitioner/graduate student in family practice. Not only does it provide treatment and management of common medical conditions but also includes psychosocial aspects of caring for clients and their families.


Harnessing MicroStation Version 5
Published in Hardcover by Delmar Publishers (1994)
Authors: G. V. Krishnan, James E. Taylor, and Robert A. Rhea
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Harnessing MicroStation/J(tm)
Harnessing MicroStation/J is an adequate learning tool for beginners, but suffers from a lack of advanced topics. Several high level features are not even mentioned, ie. b-spline curves and surfaces and plot tables. The index is very weak. The few entries that are there, use obscure program names for features, instead of common subject names.

This won't replace the User or Reference Guide for MicroStation/J, you will want to keep them at hand. It does give a good second look at the basic concepts in MicroStation.

An Excellent Choice
I am a Vocational Professor at Amarillo College in the Computer Assisted Design department. I have used different editions of this text for years to teach the MicroStation courses in our department. He covers basics thoroughly and provides excellent exercises using practical working drawings. My advanced course includes customization and 3D topics, all of which are included in this text. I recommend it highly.


Winston Churchill
Published in Hardcover by Houghton Mifflin Co (1952)
Author: Robert Lewis Taylor
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An informal study of greatness
My copy of this book is entitled "An Informal Study of Greatness." What the subtitle promises, the book delivers. Rather than an exhaustive look at each and every event of importance, Taylor gives us a glimpse of Churchill, the man, in a series of anecdotes and vignettes. For example, WWII occupies approximately the same space as the material on his hobby painting. However, as the book was written in 1952 (when Churchill was still alive), and because Churchill himself was so guarded about giving interviews, this was the necessary method of writing. It is very successful, though. Taylor supplies wit and flow to the narrative, so it is very easy and entertaining to read.

Churchill's views would today seem prehistoric - he was against universal suffrage, for example. Likewise, the narrative suffers somewhat for having been written in a time of universal chauvenism. This does not detract from the book - it's always necessary to judge people relative to the times in which they lived, and Churchill's life took place in a time of immense social and military change.

It's clear that the author respects and admires Churchill, but not to the detriment of his objectivity. He does not gloss over Churchill's heavy drinking, lack of fashion sense, or child-like impatience. He does not dwell on them, either, instead moving quickly from story to story to give a sense of the personality of the man, not a detailed analysis of his political or social views.

This book is a fascinating glimpse at the man behind the legend. It's too bad it's been out of print for some time, but it's not too difficult to find used - I gather the book did well, so there's lots of copies out there.

Well Worth the Read
Taylor's biography of Churchill is one of the more interesting biographies I have read. His task is substantial: putting the life of Churchill into a volume with the loud background of the twentieth century is not easy to do. Taylor has managed to give us a kind but honest treatment of one of the great men of the twentieth century. Churchill shines at most everything he does. Although a terrible boy and student at Harrow School, he emerged as a leader at Sandhurst, then a seeker of wars and crises, an early visionary of the threat from Adolph Hitler as well as the Soviet Union and through it all a most controversial figure. How else can we explain his being ousted from his position of Prime Minister two months after he completed his role in orchestrating the defeat of Hitler? Artist, voluminous writer, military officer, faithful husband: all these qualities and more spring forth from the witty pen of Robert Lewis Taylor.


The 10-Minute Diagnosis Manual: Symptoms and Signs in the Time-Limited Encounter
Published in Spiral-bound by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Publishers (15 July, 2000)
Author: Robert B. Taylor
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The 10-Minute Life Manual When You Don't have 10mins...
I have just started my appointment in a very remote outback hospital and I mean remote,our nearest city is a 5 hour flight,with the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctors Service) with no-surgeons in the hospital and even then only a monthly roster. So as a new Intern it is vital to keep up-to-date with my big city collegues and to be able to refer to a book that can live in the fast line and in my pocket, has just about everything right there on-call like myself. It makes the world of difference and more importantly gives me the added confidence in my own ability. In today's fast-ever moving medical field it is vital that even in the great Australian outback that we are kept up-to-date all around the country not to mention the world. It is easy to read, With drug interaction always an added bonus and has excellent stress proofed intern's referencing and and is user friendly.. Highly recommended to all other medical/intern's and like wise health professionals.


Artifacts
Published in Hardcover by Xlibris Corporation (25 April, 2001)
Author: Robert S. Taylor
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Whew. What a stinker.
It's difficult to know what to make of Robert S. Taylor's "Artifacts". Published by self-publisher extraordinaire, XLibris, the tome costs nearly 50% more than a standard trade paperback, but price is not always an indicator of quality, is it? The cover is a crude, crayon drawing of a clawed hand, an ankh and a scary serpent, the sort of graphic you might find scrawled on a high-school student's notebook. The content of the book is the kind of thing you might find in the garbage can next to the slush-pile reader's desk in a real publishing house.

The story concerns Brian Miller, an archaeologist who has "graduated and has a degree and all", but makes a practice of slipping small artifacts in his shirt pockets, instead of leaving them in situ and cataloging them properly. Miller then inexplicably leaves the dig site to go home to New Orleans and visit with his chums, taking the ankh and some other purloined items with him.

Miller's chums, Lewis, whose lifestyle "allowed him to enjoy an unbelievable social life and the love of many women", and quiet Eric, are an odd pair who hurl hateful insults at one another and then claim to be only joking.

Before long, the magical, stolen objects start wreaking havoc before releasing the demon Lilith into our universe and the streets of New Orleans, forcing the three pals to join together and battle it out with the forces of evil.

The book is full of unintentional screamers and horrible dialog. Taylor, 23 when he wrote the book, writes like a Gen Xer speaks, without concern for the rules of grammar or punctuation. The plot is simplistic and full of filler; Taylor wants to write about the funny things he and his buddies used to say to each other more than he wants to tell a supernatural tale.

In one bewildering scene, an Algerian worker from the archaeological dig site, seeking revenge both for being fired and for the theft of the ankh, follows Miller onto the New Orleans-bound plane with an attaché-case full of explosives. Rather than detonate the bomb while airborne, which would at least kill Miller, the fellow waits until the plane lands, leaves the case behind, then tries to escape the blast by running and shoving people out of the way.

Moments later, after the nearly-empty plane has exploded, maintenance workers (MAINTENANCE WORKERS - investigating an airplane explosion?) discover the remains of a passenger seated on the plane with pieces of the detonator all over him. Neat trick, considering he would have been incinerated and it would have taken FAA investigators weeks to piece it together. Oh, yeah. He also had just escaped the plane by running and shoving people out of the way.

Upon release from her interdimensional prison, the demon-mother Lilith heads straight for Bourbon Street, where she lives it up with a passel o' Pina Coladas (she doesn't have to pay - she just hypnotizes the bartender) at a strip club, then sets up shop in an adult entertainment center. Ahem.

During the course of the story, one of the intrepid heros changes into a bright orange dragon, Brian Miller crumbles to dust and a kindly old professor keels over in a death scene so funny you'll have to read it twice to make sure it's as bad as you think it is.

There's a cyborg, too, but it makes my head hurt just to think about it.

On the one hand, I applaud Robert S. Taylor for having the fortitude to sit down and actually write 300 or so pages of fiction. That takes motivation and integrity. But to publish it as is, without bothering to edit, is both presumptious and deceptive. At least when one buys a professionally published novel, one has the expectation that the book will have been read by more than the author's immediate family and that someone might have tried to make the book readable. With the emerging world of self-publishing, we have no such safeguards.

"Artifacts" is a stinker of the first degree.


Burma: Political Economy Under Military Rule
Published in Paperback by C. Hurst & Co (Publishers) Ltd (08 March, 2001)
Author: Robert H. Taylor
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modern burma: a useful overview
Robert Taylor has done a good job collecting essays from a variety of experts on Burma, the country formally known as Myanmar. The writings in this collection range from a discussion of human rights in burma, to the work of international non-governmental organizations, to a discussion on the liklihood of reforming burma's political economy. A very short but interesting essay towards the back by Seng Raw gives a look into the ethnic minority perspective -- a perspective by many accounts often discounted by burma's current military government. Contributors to this collection include a number of renowned asian studies scholars including david steinberg of georgetown university and josef silverstein of rutgers. In addition, a number of journalists and scholars who commute back and forth to burma have contributed essays and their work gives this book an up-to-the-minute feel.
While this book is fairly academic it is very interesting. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a serious collection of essays on burma. For a more emotional read try The Stone of Heaven by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark. It details the corrupt business of jade mining in Burma and is a real heart wrencher. Anyway, for Taylor, A-.


The Children of Herakles (Greek Tragedy in New Translations)
Published in Paperback by Oxford University Press (1992)
Authors: Euripides, Henry Taylor, and Robert A. Brooks
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Euripides on the age old question of political refugees
"The Children of Herakles" has usually been considered a minor political play by Euripides. First performed in 430 B.C.E. it tells of how the children of Herakles were exiled by from their home by the murderous King Eurystheus of Argos (the one who imposed the famous Twelve Labors on the demi-god) after their father's death. The children and their mother fled from country to country in search of sanctuary until, of course, they came to Athens. At first, the Athenians are reluctant to grant asylum, since Eurystheus might bring political and military strife on the city. But Demophon, King of Athens, agrees to admit them. Indeed, the army of Eurystheus surrounds the city and the oracles declares that the safety of Athens depends on the sacrifice of a virgin. Macaria, one of the daughters of Herakles, offers herself as the sacrificial victim. There is then a surprising twist as Eurystheus is captured and Alkmene, the mother of Herakles, insists that the tyrant be put to death.

The play has usually been considered to be nothing more than a glorification of Athens, but, of course, in more contemporary terms it is worth reconsidering this Greek tragedy as a look at the problem of political refugees. This comes approach focuses on the debate the Athenians have over accepting the refugees. In this context it is not simply that Athens is a great place because it accepts the children of Herakles but rather that doing so is a political action of some significance; historically we know that the Athenians were not as generous as Euripides depicts them, but then we also recognize that the tragic playwright was try to inspire his audience. There is also a clear sense of the refugees as being heroic rather than pathetic, not only because of Macaria's willingness to be sacrificed but simply because they have survived. You can consider every refugee to be a success story because they have survived and made it out of their troubled homeland alive.

"The Children of Herakles" works well as an analog to "Medea," with the one play dealing with the topic of how Athens treated refugees and the other touching on how the city tolerated foreigners. However, as with other plays by Euripides, such as "Trojan War," this tragedy is also a meditation on the effects of war. This is one of the shortest plays in Greek drama, but it is arguably one of the most complex of the plays of Euripides. The play suffers from having a particular character dominate the action or a truly great heroic scene and this is never going to be one of the first Greek tragedies anybody is going to look at (indeed, it apparently was never performed in the United States until just recently). But even if it comes at the end of your study of Euripides, it is still a play worth considering for what it says about the playwright and his attempts to inspire his Athenian audience.


A Deed of Death: The Story Behind the Unsolved Murder of Hollywood Director William Desmond Taylor
Published in Hardcover by Knopf (1990)
Author: Robert Giroux
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Logical and Interesting
"A Deed of Death" is well worth reading . It provides some interesting information and the author discusses the possible suspects in considerable detail. His final "Summing Up" as to the likely guilt( or otherwise) of certain people is logically set out and the arguments he presents appear to be well supported by acceptable evidence. Perhaps a bit too much space was devoted to seemingly unrelated career details of Mable Normand such as her problems with Samuel Goldwyn which didn't seem to have anything to do with the Taylor case. Also, the author chose not to expand on the fact that Taylor was due to appear in court on the day of his murder as a defence witness for his butler who had been arrested in WestLake Park not long before on a morals charge. Kirkpatrick in "A Cast of Killers" obviously considered this fact to be more significant than Mr Giroux. But, overall this book is very entertaining and the author has managed to dig out some new facts about the central character which are enlightening . Bill Taylor comes across as being a thoroughly decent man who has been wrongly maligned over the years.


Executive Selection: A Research Report on What Works and What Doesn't
Published in Paperback by Center for Creative Leadership (1998)
Authors: Valerie I. Sessa, Robert Kaiser, Jodi K. Taylor, and Richard J. Campbell
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Useful scientific findings for better executive appointments
This is very interesting book or rather a research report. More than 300 appointments are analysed scientifically for success. Such factors as, internal versus external appointments, the use of a committee to make the selection versus a single person , the selection steps, what candidate qualities are most important for success, and much more have been examined using statistical methods. The book is not an easy read but fortunately it is short, 77 pages. Even when it may in some cases hard to understand, the findings are thought provoking, and the list of questions asked is excellent.


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